Since turn about is always fair play, I figured I'd run this up the flag pole!

Based on the top 40 over the last few months an obvious trend of Theatrics gladiators moving up, more recently War gladiators as well and a steady decline in Rage.

At this point Rage gladiators at the top are an endangered specialty! Never having more than 3 and now only 2 in the top 10 and the next one isn't found until the #15 spot! Now, let's just cut to the chase and put all the regular nonsense like rampage and damage stacking and blah, blah, blah are unbalanced and unfair onto the table as to not go through all that again as such statements are obviously not true otherwise the rankings wouldn't look like they do. The rankings speak for themselves.

What can explain such a glaring trend?

I can't speak for all Ragers, but I see two popular builds running around and their fatal flaw which is keeping them out of the top.

Build #1: Duel wield blades. Has too much trouble handling armor if using quick daggers or rapiers. Middle range blades handle the armor but can't handle the counter attacks by a larger wielding weapon of a Theatrics gladiator. Move up to a Bastard Sword and you solve the Theatrics problem, but now your attacks drop to a level where you no longer can handle War and other Ragers...

Build #2: Two-Hander. Quite simply they don't attack enough. Period. While they can drop a man in 3 hits sometimes 2, the fact that many of those attacks are blocked by the armor or Create Distance makes them an inconsistent gladiator at best completely at the mercy of the opponent's build more than their own.

The first build has had much more success than build #2 and I'd say Two-Handers in general have got the short end of the stick since the beginning and the fact one has never sat on the throne is proof to that. I don't think they've even been in the top 3, I think Eruption hit #5 briefly but he is a two handed tank so not surprising he made it before a two handed Rager.

Another possibility is of the top managers only a few run Rage and as such they are poorly represented.

I'm happy to deal with the status quo, but something isn't quite right.

Discuss...